Photo: David Weigel, Washington Independent

Al Franken’s brief reign as Democrats’ 60th vote in the U.S. Senate will come to an abrupt end today if Republican Scott Brown wins Massachusetts’ special election — a potential result that former Sen. Norm Coleman calls “cosmic.” Indeed, Democrat Martha Coakley even coming close could mean a “stolen election” a la Franken’s recount victory over Coleman in Minnesota, says NewsMax.

The NewsMax story, headlined “Republican Fears of Stolen Election Grow in Massachusetts,” begins:

The specter of Minnesota’s bitterly contested election contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman now hangs over Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts, with Republicans and conservative pundits warning that anything less than a clear-cut victory for GOP challenger Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley risks a “stolen election.”

Coleman and Franken offered their takes on the Massachusetts race on Monday. Coleman told Minnesota Democrats Exposed :

Whatever happens … I think Massachusetts really sent a loud message to Congress that this country is deeply concerned about the path that Congress appears to be taking on issues such as health care and the wild, out-of-control spending. So whether our guy wins, or Brown wins, tomorrow or not, I think a message has already been sent. If in fact our candidate would prevail, I think it would be of cosmic proportions. … I think that debate [on health care reform] is going to be stopped in its tracks, because there are going to be those on each side of the aisle that realize that they move forward at their peril. If Massachusetts goes Republican, it will be an extraordinary event in American political history. Tomorrow’s a big day.

Franken was asked about Massachusetts on Minnesota Public Radio. Bob Collins’ “News Cut” account of the exchange:

Passage of the health care bill will be more complicated if/when a Republican is elected. “The House would have to vote for the Senate bill,” Franken says. What is likely to cause Martha Coakley’s defeat? “(She) took it for granted. A lot of misinformation has been put out there” on health care. “It’s not going to add to the deficit,” Franken insisted. “People are dissatisfied with the way things are up there [in Massachusetts].”

Franken was also asked about Coleman. “I saw him this morning at the Martin Luther King Day breakfast [in Minneapolis],” Franken said. “We had a nice exchange. A couple nice exchanges.”

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

OWATONNA: Al Franken stumps for Jason Engbrecht. Massachusetts’ isn’t the only special senate election. [Waseca County News]

MINNEAPOLIS: Something besides benefit concerts. Freelance musicians can get annual checkups through new program. [Workday Minnesota]

MARSHALL: Marty Seifert preens. He’s on top among GOP guv candidates now that Coleman’s out. [Star Tribune]

DELANO: Tom Emmer begs to differ. He’s working his University of St. Thomas connections to close the gap with Seifert. [Politics in Minnesota]

MINNEAPOLIS: Teamsters back Mark Dayton. It’s his second union endorsement; six DFL guv candidates can lay claim to labor support.  [Politics in Minnesota; Polinaut]

STATEWIDE: Everything’s earlier on electoral calendar. And Seifert can’t wait for the State Fair. [Minnesota Public Radio]

The main reason: Under Minnesota law, he can’t.

Gary Goldsmith, executive director of the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, tells the Minnesota Independent:

Minnesota Statutes Section 10A.27, subd. 9(c) prohibits a state candidate from accepting any contribution from a federal candidate’s committee.  This would prohibit transfer of any candidate’s federal committee funds to the a state office committee of the same candidate.

Even if such transfers were allowed, they couldn’t come from the campaign committee Coleman formed to take his recount showdown with Franken to Minnesota courts. Coleman terminated his recount committee last fall, according to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).

The only federal Coleman committee that is current in FEC records is “Coleman for Senate 08.” That committee last filed a financial report in October, when it had $91,621 on hand. (The FEC found donor information in the October report to be lacking; the campaign has until next Tuesday to send in complete info.)

Coleman for Senate 08 got nearly $6,000, and the Republican Party of Minnesota nearly $30,000, from the Coleman Minnesota Recount Committee in its last days of operation last September.

Update: Coleman announced on Jan. 17 that he won’t be entering the governor’s race in 2010.

Photo: Minneapolis Journal, MHS

The winter issue of Hennepin History magazine recounts a notorious Great Depression-era bank robbery in Minneapolis, with story lines seemingly ripped from today’s newspapers: A murderous attack on a street-corner business in a city so broke it can’t pay police, inspiring the formation of what sounds like the first Metro Gang Strike Force.

The Barker gang killed three men on Dec. 16, 1932: two police officers in the course of robbing the Third Northwestern National Bank and, while parked in St. Paul to divide their take, a Good Samaritan.

The officers, it turns out, were working for free:

At 2:43 p.m., a police cruiser carrying two experienced officers — Ira Evans and Leo Gorski — pulled up to the bank. Evans and Gorski were not on duty when they received the police-radio message …

Nor were Evans and Gorski even on the Minneapolis police payroll — none of the force was: In the depression-era economy, the department had run of money at midnight on December 11. Policemen had received their last checks on December 13, with pay two days short and agreed to work from December 11 to January 1 without pay, the lost wages never to be made up. When Gorski and Evans answered the call, they were working overtime and without compensation.

Gorski and Evans were outgunned, with only revolvers against the gangsters’ machine guns and shotguns. After their deaths, Mayor William A. Anderson pleaded for:

… a spirit of cooperation among our best and wealthiest citizens, a determination to provide not only adequate wages for their protectors but modern equipment, machine guns, armored cars, with which to combat clever and ruthless thieves. If this result is accomplished, it will be an example for other cities to follow, and perhaps the lives of Evans and Gorski will not have been given in vain.

Author Robert C. Rasmussen writes that Anderson’s plea was answered within City Hall:

The Minneapolis City Council responded by appropriating funds to buy the latest weaponry and police vehicles. This led to the creation of special assault teams trained to deal with the most dangerous situations in the Twin Cities.

Hennepin History magazine is not available online. You can get a copy at the Hennepin History Museum.

Stephanie Schriock

Franken for Senate campaign manager Stephanie Schriock is headed to the top of the EMILY’s List organization with the exit of founder and president Ellen Malcolm. Schriock has Minnesota links beyond steering Al Franken to the U.S. Senate: She was born and attended college in Mankato.

It’s a changing of the guard at EMILY’s List, which is marking a quarter-century of helping pro-choice women get elected across the country. Schriock is 36.

In Minnesota, House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher (for governor) and state Sen. Tarryl Clark (for the congressional seat held by Michele Bachmann) are recent recipients of EMILY’s List support.

The ruling reverses cuts to the Minnesota Supplemental Aid Special Diet program retroactively to Nov. 1, pending a hearing in the case set for March 1, 2010.

But the order doesn’t affect Pawlenty’s unallotment cuts to other programs. Nor does it prohibit Pawlenty or the state Legislature “from the exercise of their legitimate constitutional power in light of the current budget issues facing the State of Minnesota.”

The suit was filed by six Minnesotans on behalf of themselves and others who either receive or would be eligible to receive the aid.

Acknowledging her own duty to “tread lightly when dealing with ’separation of powers issues,’” Ramsey County District Court Judge Kathleen Gearin wrote in her order (pdf): ”It is equally important that the Governor tread lightly when dealing with separation of powers issues.”

Gearin is familiar to many from her service a year ago on the State Canvassing Board overseeing the U.S. Senate election recount between Al Franken and Norm Coleman.

She was careful to say in issuing the restraining order that her decision was based on process, not policy, considerations:

It is important that all parties understand that the decision made by this Court today has nothing to do with the merit or lack of merit of the individual programs unalloted by the Governor. The Court’s decision was based on the way he unalloted, not what he unalloted. … Those budget and policy decisions are not the business of the courts unless they are made in a way that violates the Constitution.

Gearin’s objections don’t sound favorable to Pawlenty:

The authority of the Governor to unallot is an authority intended to save the state in times of a previously unforeseen budget crisis, it is not meant to be used as a weapon by the executive branch to break a stalemate in budget negotiations with the legislature or to rewrite the appropriations bill.

[Via MPR and AP]

Opponents “waited too long to assert a claim to set aside the sale,” the court ruled (pdf) Tuesday.

A group called SaveWCAL opposed St. Olaf College’s 2004 sale of WCAL-FM to MPR from the start. The group’s contention that the sale was void under state charitable-trust laws led to a lawsuit filed in 2008.

That was within the six-year statute of limitations. But the appeals court found that reversing the deal now would harm “innocent parties” — the kiddies at The Current’s family events included.

Such potential harm to innocents creates an exception to the statute of limitations, the court said, rendering SaveWCAL’s suit too late.

In its opinion the court didn’t rule on the merits of SaveWCAL’s claims but only on whether the suit itself was tardy.

In recounting the dispute, the court included facts that appear to support SaveWCAL’s arguments, such as that MPR and St. Olaf were “co-conspirators in the breach of a charitable trust” and that the sale broke faith with decades of donations by listener-members of WCAL. From the court decision:

MPR communicated the offer to the president of St. Olaf. The president turned the offer over to a vice president of St. Olaf and the chair of the finance committee of the board of regents of St. Olaf for evaluation. The finance committee chair was also a member of the board of trustees of MPR …

St. Olaf solicited donations based on its representation that charitable gifts would “help guarantee the future of Classical 89.3 for generations to come.”

Why didn’t SaveWCAL sue earlier? Lack of funds, the group said.

Too bad, ruled the appeals court, citing this legal precedent: “Poverty alone is not a legally cognizable excuse for failure to initiate suit.”

MPR NewsQ carried an Associated Press story about the ruling as well as a New Cut blog post, where a commenter offered this assessment: “I guess you can unpack now.”

Will the appellants take their case to the state Supreme Court?

“The SaveWCAL board will now need to determine our next steps,” the organization says at its website.

Clockwise from top left: Michele Bachmann, Jim Hagedorn, Lynne Torgerson, Al Franken, Bradlee Dean, Tony Sertich

From U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann famously urging fellow conservatives to “slit our wrists” in opposition to health care reform to state Rep. Tony Sertich warning about “www.anybody.com” running wild at the Capitol, you have the Minnesota Independent to thank — or blame — for foisting these quotations on the world this year.

Our favorite ten quotes from 2009:

“What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass.”

– Michele Bachmann, member of Congress from Minnesota’s Sixth District, speaking to conservatives in Colorado

“The fruit of morality is Jesus Christ! That’s why we do high school assemblies.”

– Bradlee Dean, founder of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International, purveyor of punk-rock assemblies to public schools

“If it’s somebody who designs their own Web site and comes down to the Capitol … we could be deluged with www.anybody.com walking through the door saying, ‘I’m the online media, let me have floor access.’ You think the House chamber is a ruckus … now, wait till all the bloggers get here and show up en masse.”

– Tony Sertich, majority leader, Minnesota House of Representatives, on floor-access restrictions for online media

“Until Paul Wellstone’s plane crash, DFL Trotskyites were confident the Senator would soar to victory over Norm Coleman … [emphasis his]”

– Jim Hagedorn, Republican candidate for Congress in Minnesota’s First District, in one of the quips scrubbed from his “Mr. Conservative” blog

“Keith Ellison simply is not a proper person to have in our federal government.”

– Lynne Torgerson, independent candidate for Congress in Minnesota’s Fifth District, on her campaign website

“We will be seated. And by ‘we,’ I mean me.”

– Al Franken, addressing young DFLers during the election-contest phase of his recount battle with former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman

“I loathe, hate, despise and detest Franken and all of his supporters. I believe that this so-called hacking is just more dirty tricks by that dirtbag and his pals.”

– Gary Govro, one of the donors whose personal financial information was left unsecured at Coleman’s campaign website

“Complete and utter bullshit.”

– Bruce Schneier, technology expert, on the claim that Coleman’s online database breach didn’t compromise donors’ information

“When I think of Sarah I think of eagles.”

– Man waiting outside Mall of America book-signing event, holding photos he intended to give to Sarah Palin

“No need to poke me. There’s no need to touch me.”

– Staffer at U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum’s St. Paul office, where opponents of health care reform gathered for an impromptu “town hall” meeting

Dr. Steven Miles

Former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton insists his alcoholism (recurrent but treated) and depression (mild and controlled) aren’t debilitating. To a former DFL rival who’s also a physician, that sounds right. Dr. Steven Miles says the effects of both afflictions are overrated in politics.

“Depression is rarely disabling,” Miles tells the Minnesota Independent by email, adding that “only jackals would suggest that it alone renders him unfit for office compared to someone like [U.S. Rep.] Michele Bachmann who appears stone-cold sober.”

Miles concedes that “alcoholism can be disabling for some kinds of activities.” But he says “it is rarely disabling for effective political careers.” He cites as examples the late Minnesota Gov. Karl Rolvaag and “the extraordinary leadership of [the late U.S. Rep.] Wilbur Mills (who ushered in Medicare)”.

Indeed, many times it is alcoholism itself that gets abused — as an excuse for bad behavior.

“Today, when politicians get caught with their pants down, they reveal and blame alcoholism — exaggerating its impact and the corresponding public perception that it impaired their judgment,” Miles says. An early example is the late Sen. Joe McCarthy — “a mean SOB who happened to be an alcoholic.”

Miles is no automatic Dayton apologist. When Dayton and his wallet made a late entry in the 2000 U.S. Senate race, Miles told Minnesota Public Radio that a bank account doesn’t equal a political base, and that Dayton seemed to be running because he had nothing else to do.

But Miles has personal experience with bipolar disorder. His dealings with depression became public when he successfully fought to keep his mental health files out of the hands of the state Board of Medical Practice (pdf), and he remained open about his condition during his 2000 U.S. Senate run.

Miles was a runner-up that year, a second-place finisher in the first two ballots at the state party convention, behind former state Sen. Jerry Janezich, who went on to win endorsement after the ninth ballot but lost to Dayton in the DFL primary.

What were the chances that two people in the DFL’s 2000 field of Senate candidates would suffer from depression?

Actually, pretty good. According to Miles, the lifetime risk of depression is about 10–15 percent, and for alcoholism about 5 percent.

“The nation would lose enormous talent and productivity by sidelining these people,” Miles says.

MPR’s News Cut quotes Lookout Services CEO Elaine Morley promising to include the news organization in legal complaint. What the complaint is about is unclear, beyond a statement on the firm’s website (pdf) alleging unauthorized access by both state government and MPR:

[L]imited portions of the company’s proprietary software may have been illegally compromised by The State of Minnesota and Minnesota Public Radio. … “We have contacted the FBI and other law enforcement officials and we are fully cooperating with their investigation into this matter,” said Elaine Morley, CEO of Lookout Services. Lookout Services Inc., filed suit against The State of Minnesota on December 10,
2009.

The re-election/recount campaign of former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman made similar statements after local technology experts called attention to campaign donors’ private financial data being left unprotected on the campaign’s website early this year.

At that time, Coleman’s spokesmen said a U.S. Secret Service investigation would get to the bottom of the breach, with legal repercussions for alleged hackers — but no such consequences for Wikileaks or those who raised the alarm have come to light.

And when the Minnesota Independent last checked, nothing had come of charges that Coleman violated state law by failing to notify donors about the breach.